Press

In the media links below, newest to the oldest, there is a common theme when Truth in Texas Textbooks or Truth in Textbooks is mentioned…“non-experts”, “conservative activist group”, “climate deniers”, “right wing activists” are used to describe efforts by TNT to return truth to the textbooks. The American Federation of Teachers of Texas labeled groups/individuals who aren’t teachers who “dare” to comment on textbooks as “nincompoops”. These “nincompoops” found over 1500 errors when the “professionals” failed to identify them. Judge for yourself how valuable citizen involvement is in the process.

When critics can’t argue the facts and revert to name calling, the debate is decided in the favor of those who stick to the facts. TNT is happy to correct our reports when they are proven wrong and in some cases that has occurred. We just want others to apply that same standard.

It would take up too much time to respond to the errors in some of the reports but in order to get a proper perspective about the contempt that publishers have for “average citizens” and particularly for Texas in how they have pushed back against the revisionist history found in many textbooks.

This undercover video from Project Veritas captures some the arrogance within some publishing community toward “average citizens” who wish to look at their children’s and grand-children’s instructional materials.

June 28, 2017Critics Fear New Texas Law Giving SBOE Wide Discretion Over Textbooks

In past legislative sessions, a bill this momentous would have been major news. But in the “worst Legislature ever,” it received almost no press coverage at all — elbowed out by bathrooms, vouchers, “show me your papers” legislation, religious freedom carve-outs and new restrictions on abortion.

Senate Bill 801, authored by Senator Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on June 9, gives the controversy-plagued State Board of Education (SBOE) the authority to reject textbook content it deems not “suitable for the subject and grade level for which the instructional material was submitted.” That may not be as innocuous as it sounds.

Seliger has said that his measure is “not intended to create another ideological battleground,” but to ensure that textbooks are “acceptable from an academic point of view.” Indeed, the law does mandate that textbooks be “reviewed by academic experts.” However, it doesn’t require that those experts determine whether content is suitable for students. That determination is left in the hands of partisan, elected board members, who are not required to have any teaching experience or academic training in the subjects they oversee.

Critics worry that giving such wide discretion to SBOE members will be detrimental to Texas’ 5.3 million public school students.

“It kind of scares me,” said Representative Alma Allen, a Houston Democrat who previously served as an SBOE member, in a May 18 House committee hearing. Allen warned that SB 801 “allows members of the board to inject their own ideology or reject a book for other reasons.”

Before 1995, the SBOE had sweeping authority over textbook adoption and sometimes used that power to demand that publishers change content for ideological reasons. For instance, a report from the left-leaning Texas Freedom Network notes that the board once “pressured a publisher to replace a photo of a woman carrying a briefcase with another showing a woman putting a cake in the oven.”

Controversies surrounding textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas. For years, textbook selection in Texas has grabbed headlines and generated great discontent and debate. Textbooks adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) are unusually important because they are also adopted for use in classrooms across the country. Whatever Texas adopts, students across the United States get. In 2014, a coalition of unpaid Texas citizens who called themselves “Truth In Texas Textbooks,” presented the SBOE with a report containing 469 pages of factual errors, “imbalanced presentation of materials, omission of information, and opinions disguised as facts,” found in three world history and geography textbooks that were being considered for adoption that November. And who can forget the 2015 textbook fiasco, when the Texas Board of Education refused to allow professors to review and fact-check textbooks that were to be implemented in Texas curricula that year. Historians and other academics protested because non-experts were writing and reviewing history textbooks.

But that was not the only contentious issue surrounding textbooks in Texas last year. Mrs. Roni Dean-Burren split open a Pandora’s box of controversies when she posted a picture on Facebook of her teenage son’s textbook which explicitly portrayed slaves as immigrant workers. The Texas State Board of Education had adopted the textbook, published by McGraw Hill, a few years ago and sold about 140,000 in Texas and other states. McGraw Hill was quick to respond and quench the controversy. They immediately acknowledged that they had made “a mistake” and rapidly agreed to do their “utmost to fix it.”

This year’s controversy has had a different outcome. Unlike McGraw Hill, Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle, the authors of the Mexican American Heritage textbook and its publisher, Momentum Instruction, LLC, have yet to apologize for a widely criticized textbook. Beyond an unwillingness to acknowledge the large number of problems in their textbook, they have failed to respond to questions and comments from historians and experts challenging their work. The Mexican American Heritage textbook has more than 800 factual errors, errors of omission, and misleading representations of Mexican American history and culture.

Sept 2016
Radio Interview – Military City USA – Listen to Interview here.

Lt Col Roy White is an Air Force veteran of Desert Storm and Operation Southern Watch. Calling the Hill Country of Texas home after moving from Flower Mound, TX in 2011 he is a commercial airline pilot and has been involved with nearly a dozen military non-profit organizations since 2006 helping wounded warriors, families of military fallen heroes and specifically children of military fallen heroes when he served as the President/Chairman of Snowball Express which brings children of military fallen heroes together each year for an a 5 day all-expense paid gathering of healing.

August 21, 2016Presentation to American Freedom Alliance Conference on TNT Efforts

July 20, 2016
The cause of and cure for climate disruption. From the World Socialist Party website!

There is a political dispute going on about climate change, global heating, or global climate disruption. The dispute, unfortunately, is not simply about what to call it but about whether ‘it’ is happening at all, and if it is whether ‘it’ is being caused by human activity. Ordinary people are in no position to investigate the factors involved in this dispute on their own. But when 97% of the scientists who have researched the causes of the rise in recorded world temperatures publicly conclude that global climate disruption is being driven directly by human activity you would think that the dispute was settled. You would think that humanity, writ large, would get on with the task of spurring governmental and social institutions to quit the widespread practices responsible for our planetary predicament. Well, think again.

The conservative activist group Truth in Texas Textbooks lobbied the state to reject school textbooks that did not acknowledge climate change skepticism and express doubt in the science itself. The State of Texas is the second biggest schoolbook market in the United States. Instead, after being lobbied directly by environmentalists and the Climate Parents group, two large publishing houses – Pearson and McGraw-Hill Education – strengthened language on global warming. Read full article here.

Jan 15, 2016References to Islam in School Textbooks Stir Up a Fight

Wall Street Journal

Language about Islamic history in school textbooks is spurring battles across the nation, with some parents’ groups and lawmakers objecting to what they see as an overly benign portrayal of the religion’s spread and its teachings.

Following recent attacks in the U.S. and abroad by terrorists who claim to espouse Islamic beliefs, more American parent groups have turned attention to what children are taught about the religion. Muslims and their supporters say the opposition to the textbooks amounts to fear-mongering and presents a distorted view of their faith.

Kristen Amundson, executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, which represents U.S. state and territorial education boards, said she expects to see more parents pushing to change textbooks and curriculum this year.

“We will see a raft of it,” she said. “It is going to be coming before local boards, state boards and legislatures.”

A bill in Tennessee, backed by a leading Republican legislator, is expected to be the focus of heated debate in that state’s legislative session, which started this past week. The bill, introduced by Rep. Sheila Butt, seeks to exclude any “religious doctrine,” not just Islam, from middle-school textbooks.

Ms. Butt, an author of Christian books, said in an email that she wrote the bill after complaints from “constituents who realized that some religions were more heavily weighted in the standards and that doctrine was being taught to Junior High students.” Republican Gov. Bill Haslam has said the bill is too broad, but Candice McQueen, the state’s education commissioner, has sped up reviews of social-studies standards following the criticism.

Similar battles have gone before state education boards in Texas and Alabama, and there were calls throughout 2015 to revise textbooks in school districts in states including California, Wisconsin and Massachusetts. A group called Truth in Texas Textbooks Coalition won substantial changes—many of them regarding descriptions of Islam—from that state’s board of education in 2014, according to the group’s chairman, Roy White. Full article here.

Dec 2015Check these (2015) books for use FL Schools: Truth in Texas Textbooks

Below is a list/assessment of text books used in Texas. As you will note many are from Pearson, PLC and its subsidiaries ( Pearson now owns 80 + % of all Instructional Materials delivery in the US ( textbooks and on-line lesson plans).

Pearson, PLC is a British company whose 3rd and 4th largest shareholders are Islamic based companies or government.

The Texas Board of Education rejected a measure Wednesday that would require university experts to fact-check the state’s textbooks in public schools.

The board rejected the measure 8-7, reaffirming the current fact-checking system that relies on citizen review panels made up of parents, teachers, and other members of the general public.

The measure was likely proposed in response to a complaint last month, when a Houston mother found her child’s newly approved geography textbook referred to African slaves shipped to plantations in the United States between the 1500s and 1800s as “workers.”

Instead of requesting academic consultation, the board voted unanimously to require that review panels be made up of “at least a majority” of people with “sufficient content expertise and experience,” at the discretion of the Texas education commissioner.

“I think we’re making it stronger and better and more expert than in the past,” said Marty Rowley, a Republican board member from Amarillo.

Republican board member Thomas Ratliff proposed the initial measure to reduce the national controversy over Texas’ textbooks.

“The public perception of our process is not positive and I think we all know that,” said Erika Beltran, a Democrat from Dallas.

In 2014, the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund studied new history books up for review by the state’s Board of Education. The group highlighted a number of biased inaccuracies, suggesting segregated schools weren’t completely bad and Affirmative Action recipients are un-American.

“A number of textbook passages essentially reflect the ideological beliefs of politicians on the state board rather than sound scholarship and factual history,” Kathy Miller, the president of the Fund, said in a statement at the time.

After the recent proposal for an enhanced vetting system was voted down Wednesday, Ms. Miller said she is embarrassed for her state.

“With all the controversies that have made textbook adoptions in Texas look like a clown show, it’s mindboggling and downright embarrassing that the board voted this down,” she said in a statement.

Ellen Rockmore, a writing professor at Dartmouth College, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times last month suggesting the authors of Texas textbooks structure their sentences to favor slave owners and downplay the horrors of slavery.

“Through grammatical manipulation, the textbook authors obscure the role of slave owners in the institution of slavery,” she says. “The textbook publishers were put in a difficult position. They had to teach history to Texas’ children without challenging conservative political views that are at odds with history.”

Other observers say that the review process is sufficiently robust.

Roy White, a veteran of the US Air Force and head of the conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks, which participates in the review process, told board members that reviewers had successfully identified numerous errors in the geography book that had sparked the recent controversy and attributed the inclusion of the term “workers” for slaves to inevitable human error.

“You got humans involved, there are going to be some errors,” White said.

In September 2014, I found myself standing before a mostly hostile Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) testifying about religious imbalance and inaccuracies in public school textbooks under consideration for adoption. To my great surprise, I also found myself quoted in Politico, the Washington Post, and several Texas newspapers. Al Jazeera America sought me out for an on-camera interview. For a religious studies scholar more at home in the classroom or library cubicle, the swirl of media attention was, well, disconcerting.

Six months earlier, the nonprofit watchdog group Texas Freedom Network (TFN) had asked me to join ten other scholars in an independent review of the social studies textbooks up for adoption. They were troubled by the exclusion of credentialed scholars from the official textbook review panels and my job was to evaluate the coverage of religions in world geography and world history textbooks.

Since Texas is the nation’s second largest market for public school textbooks, the results of our work drew media attention well beyond the Lone Star State. Politico’s piece was titled “Texas textbooks tout Christian heritage,” while the Christian News Network‘s read: “Texas Textbooks Under Fire for Suggesting Moses Influenced Founding Fathers.”

The National Journal article The Next Plan to Get Climate Denial Into Textbooks reads like a Texas-bashing manifesto from progressive education interests. Their target was a Lone Star watchdog group Truth in Texas Textbooks, a coalition of volunteer researchers, scholars, a curriculum accuracy expert and citizens-at-large who took on the politically correct Fed Led education agenda during the 2014 Texas Social Studies textbook adoption process.

Breitbart Texasreported on how the independent voluntary review team found factual errors, historical omissions and progressive bias in the same Social Studies materials that Texas Freedom Network paid liberal professors to uncover conservative bias, which included the amusing allegation that Texas public education was teaching that Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, was an American Founding Father.

On Friday, November 21, 2014 something monumental happened in Austin, Texas, at the State Board of Education meeting. The Truth in Texas Textbooks (TTT) Coalition changed the perception that says, “Average citizens cannot make a difference in the content of students’ textbooks.”

TTT is a grassroots organization composed of average concerned citizens formed in October 2013 with a simple mission: to insure the proposed social studies textbooks are as error free as possible.

What did these 100 unpaid volunteers do? They corrected inaccurate or misleading textbooks for 5 million Texas children and found over 1,500 errors in 32 textbooks.

Dec 4, 2014The Next Plan to Get Climate Denial Into Textbooks

“As the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase, the Earth warms. Scientists warn that climate change, caused by this warming, will pose challenges to society.”

That language—featured in a fifth-grade Texas social studies textbook from Pearson Education—is exactly the kind of global warming alarmism that Emily McBurney wants to protect schoolchildren from.

McBurney was a lot happier with an earlier version of the textbook that said: “Scientists disagree about what is causing climate change.” But the publisher cut the material amid pressure from groups like the National Center for Science Education.

Nov 25, 2014

Moses and the American Constitution

(TTT Note: Multiple errors. Reporter never asked for an interview or comments. )

Roy White, chairman of the right-wing group Truth in Texas Textbooks, testified that the draft textbooks contained selective disinformation that was “pro-Islamic and anti-Christian.” White was furious about a passage in a Cengage textbook that read: “Muslims spread their religion by conquest, through trade, and through missionary work.” White claimed that Muslims who followed Muhammad’s example would only “attack or kill” non-Muslims. He said that violence as the overwhelming method of conversion had continued on from Muhammad’s time to today, when terrorist groups “under the Islamic umbrella of some multisyllable name” are messengers for Islam.

A New Conservative Watchdog’s Big Textbook War Debut – Texas Observer

When they write the history books about the State Board of Education, last week’s drama over our new social studies textbooks probably won’t go down as a high point.

After punting on a preliminary vote Tuesday, the board approved the textbooks on Friday despite receiving hundreds of pages of revisions at the last minute, which many members hadn’t read. Those revisions came partly in response to 1,500 worried letters from the public that were still arriving just last week. Though the 10-5 vote split on party lines, members agreed that this year’s textbook approvals had been a mess.

But the process was a big win for at least one man, Roy White, and his fellow volunteer textbook watchdogs.

Why Are These Textbooks Causing Such A Controversy? – MTV

Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations weighs in on the dispute.

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes to make the textbooks you use in school come together? Well, aside from being meticulously written and researched, textbooks also go through several stages of approval and fact-checking by organizations like the state’s Board of Education.

And this year in Texas, the approval process for new curriculum was slowed down by some disagreement about what should be included in the history and social studies textbooks.

According to The New York Times, those on the liberal side thought that the textbooks included too much emphasis on the impact that the Bible had on the Founding Fathers when they were writing the constitution. They argued that the texts placed far too much emphasis on Moses as an influence on our current system of laws.

Moses and the American Constitution – SlateIf Texas wants biblical characters and states’ rights in textbooks, publishers are happy to deliver.

Last week, the Texas State Board of Education held its final public hearing on new social studies textbooks being adopted for use in the state’s schools over the next decade. Despite being deep in the heart of Texas, some right-wing activists testifying at the hearing appeared to believe we were actually trapped somewhere between Syria and Iraq. Our children are under threat of Islamic indoctrination in schools! Sharia! Jihad! Intifada! The tense negotiations among activists, Texas politicians, and textbook publishers will influence what children in Texas, and around the country, will be taught about issues from Islam to Moses to climate change.

Roy White, chairman of the right-wing group Truth in Texas Textbooks, testified that the draft textbooks contained selective disinformation that was “pro-Islamic and anti-Christian.” White was furious about a passage in a Cengage textbook that read: “Muslims spread their religion by conquest, through trade, and through missionary work.” White claimed that Muslims who followed Muhammad’s example would only “attack or kill” non-Muslims. He said that violence as the overwhelming method of conversion had continued on from Muhammad’s time to today, when terrorist groups “under the Islamic umbrella of some multisyllable name” are messengers for Islam.

State Board of Education member Tincy Miller called White “a great patriot,” but the books’ treatment of Islam remained the same.

With many members vowing to improve what they described as a flawed textbook adoption process, the 15-member State Board of Education on Friday voted along party lines to adopt social studies textbooks that academics and members of the public from across the political spectrum had criticized heavily this fall for perceived biases and inaccuracies.

In a 10-5 vote, with all Republican members voting yes and all five Democrats voting no, the elected education board approved nearly 100 new social studies instructional materials, both print and digital, for the first time in a dozen years.

Could Texas lead the way to return our public school classrooms to the study of America as an exceptional nation with a rich religious heritage and the most successful free enterprise system in the world?

Yes, this could happen this week when the Texas State Board of Education votes on Friday on the adoption of new K-12 Social Studies instructional materials (IM’s). Once publishers produce IM’s that satisfy Texas’ requirements, then those same IM’s are typically used in many other states.

Neal Frey of Educational Research Analysts is known across this country as the guru of textbook evaluations, and publishers have recognized his unquestionable expertise for many years. In fact, because publishers want to sell their products in Texas (and in other states), numerous publishers have learned to seek out Frey’s counsel during the process of writing their textbooks. [Educational Research Analysts accepts no donations from any publishers or vendors.] Unfortunately, as the number of IM’s has increased exponentially because of digitized materials, it has become impossible for Mr. Frey to evaluate all of them.

HERE IS WHERE IT GETS EXCITING

Lt. Col. Roy White (retired) and his group of over 100 volunteers — Truth in Texas Textbooks — stepped up. These 100+ volunteers are made up of college professors, curriculum people, retired educators, and concerned citizens. For over a year, they have been organizing and preparing themselves to evaluate IM’s and then present their findings not only to the SBOE this week but also to grassroots citizens through public meetings and the social media in the future.

State Board of Education votes Friday on new textbooks – KSAT TV

SAN ANTONIO – The vote by the State Board of Education on textbooks, will come on Friday to allow more time for publishers to make any needed changes in the wake of continued public comment.

However, much has changed since a 2011 state law that made SBOE recommendations optional, giving school districts more local control over the selection process of curriculum materials to teach mandated state standards.

The more than 5 million students in Texas classrooms will soon have new history books to study.

The debate over what will be in them brought plenty of concerned parents, teachers, scholars and activists to downtown Austin to testify before the State Board of Education, and that was no different Tuesday, just days before the books are finally approved.

Some academics and activists have criticized what they call an exaggeration of the influence of Moses on the founding fathers, but are encouraged by some changes publishers made.

AUSTIN — State Board of Education members postponed action Tuesday on new social studies textbooks and e-books after learning that several publishers were still making corrections and other changes to ensure final approval of their books later this week.

After listening to several hours of testimony and debate on the nearly 100 books up for adoption, several members said they were not ready to cast an initial vote on the materials because of uncertainty over what the products will look like after all changes are included.

A motion to tentatively approve the list of books failed as five board members voted yes, five voted no, and four abstained. One member was absent.

The five no votes were cast by Democrats, while GOP members split on the motion with five voting yes and four abstaining.

Amid Criticism, Texas Fails to OK New Textbooks – ABC News

“I’ve tried to be a good, patriotic citizen and tried to protect the young people,” said Bruner, who is aligned with a conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks.

That organization used dozens of volunteers to raise more than 1,500 complaints about the books. It noted that the achievements of President Ronald Reagan were omitted from some while arguing that others ignored Islam’s occasional glorification of violence ? including beheadings.

Roy White, a retired Air Force pilot and Truth in Texas Textbooks’ chairman, said he supports all religions but “the political side of Islam, the part that threatens you and me … that’s not a religion.”

DALLAS, Texas — On the week of November 17-21, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will reconvene for a final week of meetings in the ongoing Social Studies textbook adoption process. Called Proclamation 2015 to reflect the 2015-16 school year that these instructional materials will be implemented. The Social Studies textbooks were last updated last in 2002.

This has never been done by any group in America. Without getting paid a penny, average citizens formed Truth in Texas Textbooks (TTT); and they have completed “the largest and most extensive textbook review of social studies textbooks in the US.”

Let by Lt. Col. (retired) Roy White, these grassroots citizens took matters into their own hands; dedicated themselves to spend countless hours reading through the new, proposed social studies instructional materials (IM’s); and they have submitted in writing the factual errors, omission of facts, half-truths, and agenda bias.

Rather than allowing leftist organizations such as Texas Freedom Network (please see link at bottom of this page) to dominate the process, these patriotic citizens of Truth in Texas Textbooks (TTT) have done “their homework.”

Background: On 5.21.10, the elected members of the Texas State Board of Education adopted new Social Studies TEKS (Texas’ curriculum standards) that are the most fact-based and patriotic of any standards in the entire United States. Since that time, publishers have been developing new social studies instructional materials (e.g., textbooks) that are supposed to be based upon the 5.21.10 Social Studies TEKS. In the upcoming Nov. 18 – 21 Board meeting, the SBOE will be voting on a list of approved Social Studies curriculum materials.

These evaluations are easily accessible to the publishers, to the public, and to the SBOE members.

The TTT (Truth in Texas Textbooks) website is easy to understand, and all of their evaluations have been formatted so that they are easy to read and share (formatted in WORD).

Lt. Col. White has explained on the website how the public can sign up to testify at the upcoming Texas State Board of Education meeting (Nov. 18, 2014). Now by utilizing the valuable TTT evaluations, the public will feel completely confident to present their remarks.

Here are excerpts from Lt. Col. White’s website, and I have posted further on down the page some helpful links for easy access:

TTT is the largest effort by average citizens assisted by subject matter experts to do full reviews on social studies textbooks. TTT will begin to populate the website with reviews by other reputable individuals and groups such as TTT who wish to share their reviews with us.

The total number of books reviewed were 32 high school and/or middle school textbooks. Cumulatively TTT reviewers compiled 469 pages of factual errors, imbalanced presentation of materials, omission of information, opinions disguised as facts and additionally questions found in the teacher’s editions that are considered “agenda building” or “leading questions” to conclusions not supported by facts.

The goal is to have as many social studies textbook reviews posted in one place that will give parents, teachers and Board of Education members a single source to find these reviews to insure the publishers are held accountable for producing factual and honest social studies textbooks. This will be an ongoing process handled by volunteers.

No one is getting paid; we are not a 501c nor plan at this point to become one. We merely want to have the most factual and intelligently honest textbooks possible for our children.

This website is dedicated to two groups:

!. The children of Texas (our future!)

2.. The TTT Coalition volunteers who have expended thousands of hours on conference calls, reading training newsletters, going through “mock reviews” and finally conducting the actual reviews on the textbooks. As well as putting up with me.

Over 5 million children will use these textbooks over the next 8 years.

TTT has reached out to each publisher and asked to speak to them in order to facilitate change and in correcting the errors we found. They are to respond to the SBOE and TEA regarding our inputs sometime this week or early next week. We will put up their replies so everyone can see what changes are being agreed to and which ones aren’t.

Based upon those final edits we will rate the books as either “Good”, “Poor” or “Worse” but this will occur sometime in December most likely as we assess the number of changes and the impact that has on the quality of the textbook. The SBOE will vote “up or down” on the textbooks on or about November 21, 2014.

This has been over a year in the making. Our volunteers have put their lives on hold in making this happen and they are the real heroes in what is the largest and most extensive textbook review of social studies textbooks by “average” citizens in the US. I hope others like them will step up in other states and in Texas when more textbooks in other areas are put forth for adoption.

Parents have a right, even an obligation, to participate in their children’s education, but in Texas, the Texas Education Agency and major textbook publishers are blocking parents from having a voice in what the students are taught.

The state has made it essentially impossible for the public to fully participate in this year’s state textbook adoption process by truncating the amount of time available for the public to examine the textbooks and by failing to provide online access to all of the books.

Dec 13, 2013Social Studies Textbook Review in Tennessee and Texas

The following was written by Lt Col (ret) Roy White, Founder of Truth in Texas Textbooks

We all know of plenty of examples of the bias in social studies textbooks revealed by various groups and individuals. Concerned Tennessee citizens formed a group called Textbook Advocates that conducted reviews of over 50 textbooks that can be found here. Many of those errors involved Islam to include incomplete information on Muhammad, overstating Islam’s influence and simple disparity in word/sentence count on discussions of Islam versus other religions. Their findings are not surprising to readers of Citizen Warrior and others who follow this topic.

The cleverly named, The Textbook Tattler was published to provide citizens with a synopsis of the typical errors found. It is likely these same errors are found in many of the textbooks found in states around the country. Tennessee’s efforts resulted in the current methodology of textbook selection to be under review and will most likely be replaced in the next legislative session. Their landmark success has inspired others to follow their lead including a group in Texas.

In early 2014 Texas begins the process of reviewing Social Studies textbooks that will be used for the 2015-16 school year. A group called “Truth in Texas Textbooks” or “Triple T” have begun recruiting volunteers from inside of Texas and outside who would be willing to help review the Social Studies textbooks that will be submitted by publishers.

Over 48 million textbooks are sold in Texas alone! This is a huge contract for publishers. Estimates range from 50-80% of school districts in the nation choose the same textbooks as those used in Texas schools. Publishers know, what sells in Texas will lead to millions of dollars in other states!

The purpose of TTT is simple, to provide Social Studies textbooks that are truthful and factual that meet the Texas Education Knowledge Standards (TEKS) as defined here. Fortunately Texas has put in place a well-defined set of standards that were recently updated with this resolution on eliminating the pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias found in the current social studies textbooks.

TTT will not simply focus on eliminating this bias but many other “PC” related themes that are so often found in textbooks today. We are not affiliated with any other NPO or national organization but are independent and have reached out to groups and individuals around the country (including Tennessee) for volunteers who are willing to help us.

The long-term goal would be to have one site, such as www.textbookadvocates.com be the single depository of these textbook reviews being done around the country so teachers, parents, advocates can have a single one stop shopping place to go and see a consolidated list of reviews of textbooks.

Publishers get away with their PC tainted textbooks because in the past groups around the country didn’t talk to each other or communicate their findings. Building on what Tennessee has done Texas wishes to continue this movement to put these reviews, along with others, in the public domain at a single website that will give information to everyone who is interested.

Anti-smokers advocacy groups weren’t effective until they banded together against the tobacco companies and shared the data from all their findings. TTT wishes to take the same approach.

The most effective method for having an impact on your children’s textbooks may very well lie on not focusing on your own local school or state but helping Texas adopt the most accurate and factual textbooks which will in turn be likely to show up in your own school district. Additionally you can go through a process with other like-minded individuals who can help you learn the process for conducting reviews.

Collaborative online project management tools, conference calls, use of webinars and other methods will be used to coordinate the efforts of those interested in volunteering. It doesn’t matter where you live, you can help Texas and in turn help millions of other children around the country by joining TTT and volunteering. Please share this with teachers, active and retired who are tired of teaching inaccurate or misleading information.

For those interested in serving on the TTT review team, please email truthintexastextbooks@gmail.com and get on the mailing list. You will be asked to complete a survey of interest, experience and level of commitment to the effort. TTT will conduct training beginning in early 2014 to provide reviewers with materials and templates of the best practices found among those experts who review textbooks. If you want to stop the spread of PC myths disguised as facts in social studies textbooks and pro-Islamic/anti-Judeo-Christian biases then please join the TTT team.

Recruiting for experts in the field of US government, history, world history, civics, constitutional law, world history, geography are some of the specific knowledge sets that are needed. Advanced degrees or self-taught are the same to TTT; your knowledge and effort in this endeavor will benefit millions of children for years to come.